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ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

reuters.com

161–170 of 319 posts

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#161
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a facility with experimental lithography machines. One of the nasties looked like water, but would pass through your skin and melt your bones. Fun.

Hydrofluoric acid, though I don't think it melts your bones in a dramatic/fast way. It seems to be partially so dangerous because it doesn't "burn" right away, and as you say, is absorbed quickly in skin. So you might not rinse it off quickly. "Piranha solution" (sulfuric acid, water, and hydrogen peroxide) is closer to what tv/movies portray hydrofluoric acid being like. That is, being able to disappear a body in it…

NileRed recently demonstrated "Piranha solution" effect on a Chicken Leg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTVd_WxblGI

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#162
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurting ASML serves neither side - and that's true for most third parties who want nothing to do with that stupidity. But since it is stupidity and given the track record of the countries involved, I wouldn't completely rule out that someone might pull a stunt like this.

China has been pouring high order of millions into domestic lithography. Eventually the market will shift. We're still a bit far away. Edit: funny that people here think that this is statement is somehow something that could be considered a contentious topic. semiengineering has a startup section with investments for people that are more interested in facts than emotions: https://semiengineering.com/startup-corner/

ASML has taken over all the business formerly held by such companies as Nikon, who are now in no position to compete. They would certainly be much better placed to do so again than some random Chinese company with no track record in the area. Disruptive innovations do happen, but that's not what the Chinese are doing here.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason to assume the ability to ramp up in WW2 has any bearing on the ability to ramp up an operation like ASML today? You cannot just throw any bodies at a problem like creating ASML. You have to throw very specific bodies with each one having at least a decade or more of very specific expertise (it seems like, based on the comments and articles I have read). That is just ASML, not even getting into the d…

Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...

Soviet also managed that, large state sanctioned projects can accomplish some feats but not others. Soviet did nuclear, soviet went to space, so those are examples of what states can do. However soviet tried to make good computers, but they failed to do so, so for all we know large state sanctioned efforts cannot solve this problem, so it looks like you need the agility of a free private sector to get through it.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#164
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not "paid to do this", and none of what I said is half-true or embellished. What is wrong with you?

China was not solely responsible for solar panel cost/efficiency improvements of the past 10 years, so that's embellished. And yes they make vaccines and nuclear reactors like many countries do or have done. And I'll just repeat that I didn't say they produce or invent zero new things. For all their rhetoric, there is not matching output of new technologies in my opinion. Almost everywhere I look yes they often play…

Who else has reduced the cost of solar panel manufacturing over the past 10 years? As far as I can tell it's entirely, 100%, Chinese companies. But maybe you know something I don't.

I don't know enough about smartphones, electric cars, conventional cars, reciprocating engines, jet engines, airliners, reusable rockets, or AI to comment on what the big innovations in the last few years are, where they came from, and which ones are being adopted in China. Can you go into more detail?

The most interesting innovations I've seen in CPUs in recent years are from Padauk (China) and RISC-V (everywhere, especially Berkeley, but also including China). NVIDIA seems to be leading in GPUs; like Lam Research, it's an American company with a Chinese-American founder. But now the critical innovation bottleneck seems to be not designing a working CPU design but successfully manufacturing it, and the supreme giant in the field is TSMC, a Chinese company, though Samsung is mostly keeping up. Of course the field is extremely international, which is why we're interested in ASML's fire in the first place.

In terms of crypto, it's an extremely international community, but two of the most significant achievements of the last 20 years were the collision attacks on MD5 and SHA1, which were found at Shandong University, which is in China. (Of course nobody knows where Satoshi is from, but China is near the bottom of the list of possibilities.)

I agree with you about operating systems and programming languages, though of course if you `git annotate` Linux you will find a rather large slice of it is written by people with Chinese names, a lot of whom work at Chinese companies.

As for drugs, well, I explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29792057 how far China is from "playing catch up" with respect to covid vaccines. But maybe in other drugs it's true. What are the big new innovations in drugs, and where do they originate?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#166

Google Streetview of the location: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4504667,13.4327515,3a,75y,22... It's as close as one can get, with about 200m missing because, I guess, the driver decided nobody would care about the rest of this godforsaken industrial area. Or they got a call at exactly that moment that Google would stop gathering photos to spite the criticism of data protection advocates that was annoying them at…

I though Street View was banned in Germany?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#167
post #152
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a now-deleted comment, "selimthegrim" posted, "Yes, let's talk more about their vaccine with 50% efficacy pre-Delta. Do you see other countries clamoring for it?" "saberience" followed up with, "The Chinese vaccine is totally shit though in terms of efficacy compared to other vaccines, and in fact, where I live the Chinese vaccines aren't accepted any longer if you need to travel etc." Do you mean Sinovac CoronaVa…

That’s slightly misleading. Most Chinese are vaccinated with CoronaVac whose protection is far behind against the Omnicron variant compared with SpikeVax or Corminaty that is being administered in NA and EU. That’s the reason why the chinese vaccine isn’t acknowledged in the EU as a full vaccination with all travel implications.

I appreciate the added context! Not just most Chinese --- as I said, CoronaVac is the most popular vaccine worldwide. Doesn't its lack of authorization in the EU, and its authorization in most of the rest of the world, predate the emergence of Ό?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason to assume the ability to ramp up in WW2 has any bearing on the ability to ramp up an operation like ASML today? You cannot just throw any bodies at a problem like creating ASML. You have to throw very specific bodies with each one having at least a decade or more of very specific expertise (it seems like, based on the comments and articles I have read). That is just ASML, not even getting into the d…

Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...

For numbers of grads in engineering I found this (2017/2018 data, please forgive poor copy/paste from pdf ): https://ira.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2018-Enginee...

“””

bachElor’s EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs Enrollment in undergraduate engineering programs increased this year continuing a decade long trend to 622,502 full-time students in 2018. Degrees awarded increased to 131,937 for reporting institutions (136, 233 including non- reporting institutions). The three engineering disciplines producing the most degrees in 2018 were, as in 2017, mechanical engineering, with 31,936 degrees, computer science (inside engineering) with 19,082 degrees and electrical engineering with 13,767.

mastEr’s EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs There was an increase in 2018 in enrollment in master’s engineering programs with a total of 93,559 students enrolled, a 6,687 student increase over 2017. The number of master’s degrees awarded increased to 66,340‬ for 2018. The three disciplines representing 39% of all engineering master’s graduates are computer science (inside engineering), with 10,946 graduates, mechanical engineering with 8,160 graduates and electrical engineering with 7,048 graduates.

doctoral EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs In 2018 there were 12,156 doctorates awarded 78,715 full-time students enrolled in doctoral programs. The 5 disciplines with a combined total of 60% of the doctoral graduates in 2018 are mechanical, electrical/computer engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering and computer science (inside engineering

“””

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#169
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elemental fluorine is nasty toxic, but it doesn’t really pollute the environment because it’s too busy oxidizing the first thing it finds and forming a never gonna let you go bond.

Kind of the reverse of mercury; elemental mercury is relatively non-toxic, but it seems like almost all mercury compounds are nasty. [edit] Chronic exposure to small amounts or acute exposure to large amounts of mercury vapor is toxic; it's just that most compounds are worse.

Yup. Cinnabar is the exception, being less toxic than both metallic mercury and most other metal sulfids.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#170
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elemental fluorine is nasty toxic, but it doesn’t really pollute the environment because it’s too busy oxidizing the first thing it finds and forming a never gonna let you go bond.

Kind of the reverse of mercury; elemental mercury is relatively non-toxic, but it seems like almost all mercury compounds are nasty. [edit] Chronic exposure to small amounts or acute exposure to large amounts of mercury vapor is toxic; it's just that most compounds are worse.

Beats breathing fluorine!
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